Air quality board considers switch from diesel

Alex Coolman

A meeting of a regional air quality agency Friday could see regulations

passed that would require expensive alterations to some Newport Beach and

Costa Mesa city vehicle fleets, officials said.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District will hold a hearing

Friday morning at its Diamond Bar office to discuss adopting rules that

would require some vehicles and waste-hauling trucks to be converted from

diesel-powered engines to motors that run on alternative fuels.

The point of the proposed regulations, said Air Quality Management

District spokesman Sam Atwood, is to address serious health concerns

associated with the use of diesel engines.

“Mobile sources [of pollution], including cars and trucks, are a dominant

source of air pollution,” Atwood said. “We really need to start focusing

more effort in that area.”

Diesel engines, which power many heavy vehicles, are particularly

worrisome, Atwood said, because studies have indicated that the pollution

they produce is a major contributor to the risk of cancer.

Such engines power the 18 trucks that Newport Beach uses for garbage

collection and some of the roughly 260 vehicles employed by the city of

Costa Mesa for a variety of services.

Dave Niederhaus, general services director for Newport Beach, said that

technology limitations on alternative-fuel engines -- such as ones that

run on compressed natural gas -- make them difficult to obtain and

prohibitively expensive.

A city study to determine the cost of converting its trash fleet to

alternative fuels, for example, found it to be $50,000 per truck.

“That’s when we backed out of that one,” Niederhaus said, noting that

additional spending would be necessary to construct new fueling stations

and for the training of mechanics.

In the areas that the Air Quality Management District covers, including

Orange and Riverside counties as well as parts of Los Angeles and San

Bernardino counties, the agency’s push to phase out diesel engines has

been a source of consternation for many vehicle fleet operators.

Both the Orange County Transportation Authority and the Los Angeles

Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently moved to acquire natural

gas-powered buses to replace their diesel models. In the case of the Los

Angeles agency, however, the decision was hotly contested.

Newport Beach, along with many other municipalities, is pushing for the

Air Quality Management District to accept what are called “fuel-neutral”

approaches to reducing air pollution. That includes making diesel engines

cleaner rather than requiring a wholesale switch to alternative fuels.

But Atwood said his agency is skeptical about such approaches.

“It’s headed in the right direction and we want to see how clean it can

become. But right now, ‘clean’ diesel isn’t clean enough,” he said.

The meeting starts at 9 a.m. at the district headquarters, 21865 E.

Copely Drive, in Diamond Bar.